Fifty percent of Republicans think blackface is okay, if it's a costume

When the poll is broken down along the two major party lines, half of Republicans believe that wearing blackface for a costume is always or sometimes acceptable. By comparison, 21 percent of Democrats believe it's acceptable.

The survey was conducted Jan. 22 to Feb. 5, when the news first broke about Northam, with a random sample of 5,599 respondents, in addition to oversamples of 530 black respondents and 508 Hispanic respondents. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.